False Reflections
by DarthGabithaTheHutt
Summary: When Dean goes missing in a room full of mirrors, a hunt becomes personal and much more dangerous. Preseries, no pairings.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: When Dean goes missing in a room full of mirrors, a hunt becomes personal and much more deadly. Pre-series, no pairings.

As always, guys, this story contains Sara Lucian, a character from several of my other Supernatural stories (which are listed in my profile for anyone who's interested). Reading those stories probably isn't strictly necessary, but might help. Sara is a friend (and nothing more) of Dean's who is also a young Hunter. She specialises in exorcisms and was trained by her mother, just as Dean was trained by John. (Possibly I should rewrite this blurb - any suggestions? I feel kinda like a record stuck on repeat).

Reviews are loved.

xxx

February 2003,  
Iowa 

It wasn't meant to be like this.

When Dean had suggested working a job together, Sara had leapt at the chance. It beat working alone, and it was meant to be a simple job. Missing people in Iowa, only about eight or nine, but all within six months of each other. The police were baffled, but that was hardly worth mentioning. Dean had outlined the plan: Go to Iowa, find the bad thing, kill the bad thing, celebrate. 

Sara was happy to have any plan to follow, no matter how simplistic. Anything was better than thinking about... well, anything.

Adrian accused her of bottling up her feelings. He said it wasn't natural to be functioning normally less than six months after your mother died violently. And he was right. He didn't know everything about Amelia Lucian's death, but he was right.

But Sara didn't much care. Until she had enough time between exorcisms and crises to deal, properly deal, with what had happened, it was way easier and safer to repress. After all, repression and denial had kept Lucians alive for centuries.

Dean understood, or at least tolerated her standpoint. He'd been there when John and Sara had agreed that mourning Amelia would have to wait until after the other Hunters accepted Sara as the new exorcist. And although he'd looked surprised, both at the suggestion and at Sara's ready acceptance of it, he hadn't said anything. Instead, he'd stuck around, forcing her to be human and hold onto what little hope remained. Sara wasn't sure if he knew what Amelia had done, but she doubted it would change much if he did know.

But then she had never expected him to go missing either.

_It wasn't meant to be like this!_

xxx

When his phone went off, Dean didn't even look over as he scrabbled on the passenger seat for it. It was here somewhere, it had to be...

Finally finding it, Dean hit the 'answer' button and held the phone up to his ear.

"Save me."

Not quite what he had been expecting. "And why should I do that, Sara?"

"Don't you even want to know what you're saving me from?"

"Adrian's bugging you again, right? 'Bout your mom?"

"Yep. Save me?"

"Once again, why?"

"Because I'm an amazing friend? Oh, alright," she added when Dean snorted. "I'll make you more cookies."

"Deal. I was about to come get you anyway."

"Why? What's up?"

"Mysterious disappearances in some random town in Iowa. Want to come?"

Dean almost certainly could deal with this on his own, but Sara was still regaining her balance where hunting was concerned. Asking her to accompany Dean was the easiest way to keep an eye on her and help her sort herself out.

"Sounds good," Sara replied. "ETA?"

"Give me a couple of hours."

"Cool. See you in a bit."

Dean tossed the phone back on to the passenger seat. The seat which was now always empty.

Sara had just lost a mother, but Dean had just lost Sam. Okay, the boy was still alive, but alive and not speaking to Dean, or riding in the Impala or hunting or having anything to do with his family. Although it wasn't much of a family anymore. God only knew where John was these days. _We can cover more ground if we split up _had somehow translated into _fine, you can hunt with Sara, but not with me. _

And while Dean wasn't exactly okay with that, he'd take what he could get. Anything was better than that empty passenger seat.

xxx

"Room twenty-seven," Sara said, tossing him the keys.

Dean snatched them out of the air and grabbed his duffel with the other hand. "Why is it that you get us a room with no trouble, but I get the evil eye?"

Sara shrugged. "'Cause I'm more respectable."

"You are so not more respectable than me," Dean said.

"Just a little bit," she replied, fishing her backpack out of the Impala. "And can we avoid getting banged around this time? I don't feel like hearing that 'escape the abusive boyfriend' spiel again."

Dean couldn't help the wince. The last time they'd hunted together, Sara had ended up with one hell of a black eye and he'd been glared at more-or-less continuously by the motel manageress until they left.

"Hey, at least you weren't being accused," he said, unlocking the motel room and entering.

"I'd prefer that, Dean! When I went to check us out, she offered to call the cops for me."

"How'd you persuade her not to?"

"I didn't. Why do think I was so insistent that we left immediately?"

"Huh." Dean shook off thoughts of the pessimistic, man-hating manageress. "You finished reading the case notes?"

"Yeah," Sara said, dumping her stuff on one of the beds. "Nine people, all missing, all in the last six months, no leads, no links, coppers baffled. I miss anything?"

"Pretty much covers it. We need to talk to the families, the authorities. There weren't any newspaper reports to follow, so we're kinda low on details."

"Well, that might actually help us. If no reporters have already covered this story, we've got a perfect excuse to talk to the cops."

"And the relatives, right?"

"We could split up, cover more ground. We really need more information."

"We always need more information," Dean said, grinning. "Okay, you want the cops or the relatives?"

"I'll take the cops. What with being more respectable and all."

xxx

And Sara was more respectable than him, Dean had to admit. While Dean was willing to play by society's rules when he really had to, he generally managed to find a reason why he didn't have to and then go with that. Sara, on the other hand, understood society's rules so well that she could practically bend them in a circle without anyone even thinking she was breaking them. Her appearance helped with that. Few people suspected a short redhead of being up to anything.

Dean dropped Sara off at the police station with a fake ID and a map of the town. Under the guise of a reporter, Sara was going to interview the police and the three families who lived close to the police station. She rolled her eyes when Dean told her to be careful, but he got a flash of a grateful smile just before he drove off.

Since Amelia's death, Sara had been... different. Not just because of her grief, that had been fast and furious and then stuffed away somewhere, but in other things. More and more, Dean wasn't seeing the woman Sara was now, but the teenager she'd been when they first met. Even shorter than she was now (a really late growth spurt in her last year of school had pushed Sara up to 5'3") and stupidly nervous, not about the things in the dark, but about herself, her own knowledge. Somewhere down the line, Sara had stopped questioning herself, but Amelia's death had knocked her right back to square one.

But this was a good plan. Splitting up not only got the most boring bit of the hunt, the research, over more quickly, it also gave Sara a slight confidence boost. And if Dean concentrated really, really hard, he could almost ignore the fact that this was the same way he'd tried to ease Sammy into the world of hunting.

xxx

She loathed high heels. Clearly, some demon had made his way into the fashion industry years ago and designed the only footwear in the world that made it preferable to go barefoot. Misogynistic bastard.

But the hated shoes added precious inches to Sara's small stature and made the entire reporter image that little bit more believable. She had no idea how Dean, with his dratted leather jacket and devil-may-care attitude ever managed to get any information at all. Sara could just about cope with her English accent and manners operating at maximum. And the heels, of course.

Which she kicked off with a sigh of relief, being careful to stuff them under her motel bed. Stupid, stupid shoes, stupider (more stupid?) genes that meant she needed heels to appear to be a normal height!

Yeah, she had to stop hanging around with people over six-foot. It gave her unrealistic expectations.

Sara, her feet now free of the high heels but still throbbing, sat up long enough to recover the notes she'd made at the police station and then curled up on the bed again. Nine missing people, no leads, yada, yada, yada. When the police had some leads, and the sky turned orange and the sun rolled backwards, then maybe she'd be grateful to the boys in blue.

She leafed through the notes from her interviews with the three families. No plans for travel, no messages, no odd occurrences in the days before the disappearance. Whatever was going on here, it was pretty subtle. She'd have to find some excuse to go back to the houses with Dean's homemade EMF detector, just to check. Her own EMF, also made by Dean, had been working brilliantly until a really crotchety spirit had thrown her into a lake. Her phone, on the other hand, had survived the dunking, thankfully. She couldn't afford to keep replacing it.

Almost on cue, the mobile rang. Sara rolled her eyes at the ringtone. That hadn't been the one she'd set it to.

"Dean, if you tamper with my phone one more time-"

And it didn't matter that she couldn't see his face; Sara _knew _that Dean was smirking.

"Find anything?" he asked, cutting neatly into the threat. He'd heard them all before, anyway.

"Not much. You?"

"So far, nada. Got one more house to check, then I'll grab us something to eat on the way back. Any requests?"

"Just nothing that looks like it could walk here on its own, alright?"

"God, you're such a girl."

"Yeah? Your point?"

"Freak."

"Git," Sara said and ended the call, trading the phone for her laptop. Research beckoned.

xxx

Dean pulled the Impala up outside the last house on his list, narrowly avoiding a large ornamental plant. Stupid things.

This was the oddest of all the houses. The others had all been carbon-copies, manicured lawns and _honey, I'm home_'s. This one though, this one looked like it belonged in a low-budget horror movie.

Which, you know, was sort of appropriate.

When the hair on the back of his neck started tingling, Dean gave into his instincts and took his pistol out of the glove compartment.

The steps up to the porch were old and battered, creaking every time Dean stepped on one. There was no doorbell that Dean could see, so he reached out and hammered on the door, which swung open as he hit it.

"Hello?" he called. "Mr, uh, Parkson?"

He waited for a few minutes and when the old guy still hadn't answered, Dean pushed the door further open and went in.

"Mr Parkson? I'm from World Weekly News," he continued. "I'm here about your nephew."

Looking around for any real sign of life and seeing none, Dean pulled his EMF detector out of his pocket. No harm in checking, after all. The hall gave off barely a flicker on the meter, but when Dean walked past the stairs, it squalled suddenly.

The sensible thing to do at this point would be to back off, get Sara up here as back up, and then go up the stairs.

Dean took the steps two at a time, following the EMF meter. The readings were strongest at the far end of the corridor, by a door apparently no different than any of the others, except for the way the EMF was freaking out.

He tucked the EMF away again and took out his gun. Holding that in one hand, he carefully took hold of the doorknob and gave it one hard twist, shoving the door open suddenly.

_Okay, that's just kinda weird. _

xxx

Sara jerked awake, the laptop dead on her lap and one hell of a sore neck. She hated falling asleep while researching, but normally Dean woke her up before-

No Dean.

She almost fell off her bed in her hurry to get to the window. Bright sunshine, no Impala. Dean's bed was neatly made, which meant there was no way in hell he'd slept in it.

Sara grabbed her phone from the bedside table and dialled Dean's number. No reply, not even the voicemail message. _The number you have called could not be reached. _

What the hell did that mean?

She threw the phone on the bed and quickly stripped off the smart clothes she'd worn the day before. She redressed herself in her battered jeans and boots, hair back in a long braid. Hunting clothes. Next her rucksack was fished out and Sara unzipped it, checking through everything. A few basic reference books, herbs, charms. Her Colt revolver, the 9mm Beretta she used when she needed more than six bullets, spare ammo. From the bed, she grabbed the notes on the case and swept them into her bag as well.

Tossing the bag over one shoulder, she grabbed the room key and her phone and headed out. Sara was halfway down the street before one final option hit her. Pulling her phone out again, she scrolled down past Dean's number to his father's.

"This is John Winchester…"

Sara hung up. Voicemail, damn voicemail. That was so typical of John!

Right, so Dean had said he had one house left to check, hadn't he? Sara pulled the list of missing people out of her bag. Those three, she'd seen to, which left six. And it was far too much to hope that Dean had visited them in any sort of order.

Sara had been hunting for too long not to worry about Dean not turning up. Few Hunters skipped out in the middle of a job, even fewer left their partner behind and Dean didn't feature on either list. They always let the other know what was going on, that was and had always been the rule. Even before they'd started hunting together properly, they'd always told each other where they were, what they were hunting.

No, Dean hadn't left. Some thing had taken him.

And Sara was very good at dealing with _things_.

xxx

Five houses later, she was ready to scream. Yes, they'd all seen Dean the day before, although none of them had called him that. What was it with Dean and rock-star aliases anyway? But none of them had seen him since, none of them had noticed anything odd.

But this last household had been the last straw. The woman had been trying to be nice, Sara could tell, but that didn't help. She knew loads of people had been going missing recently, she knew none of them had been found, and she really didn't want to think about it, thank you very much!

Well, there was one last house to check. If she didn't find any trace of Dean there, she'd have to beg/borrow/steal a car and widen the search area. The town was small enough to make walking from one house to another easy enough, even if this last one was technically outside the town's borders.

As Sara drudged along what she really hoped was the right road, she mentally scrolled through her list of things that go bump in the night. Whatever she was- Whatever they were dealing with, it wasn't a werewolf, black dog, Wendigo or skinwalker. Nor vampire, Woman in White, possession. A ghost seemed the most likely, although the link between the victims eluded Sara completely. Maybe a-

Sara's train of thought derailed and caught fire as she rounded one last corner and saw the Impala in all its glory.

She started running, skidding to a halt next to the car that was as much a part of Dean as his smirk. It looked okay, no broken glass, no blood on the seats. She circled round to the trunk and checked the lock. Still in one piece. Sara didn't have a key to the Impala, never had and most likely never would, but if anything human had had any part in Dean's disappearance, they would have taken the car as well. Sara didn't believe Dean entirely about the Impala's value, but she knew it was worth more than enough to make it worth stealing.

Okay, so no signs of Dean. But that also meant no signs of Dean _dead _and Sara could cope with that, for the moment at least.

Sara turned to face the house. Ugly, run down, a little creepy. The sort of house that Hunters avoided just on principle, because yeah, ok, we hunt demons, but at least we have standards.

And damn it, she didn't need to hear Dean in her head right now!

She hurried up the steps to the front door, noting that it was open, but not broken open. Dean had a penchant for kicking doors open, breaking locks and splintering wood. But this door was just… open. Like someone had forgotten to lock it properly. Sara pushed the door further open and stepped in.

"Dean?" she yelled. "Dean, you here?"

Methodically, she checked each room. The whole house smelt stale, all the windows were closed and shuttered.

"Current address, my ass," she murmured. No one had lived here for months, at the very least.

It wasn't until she was upstairs, having checked every room but one and found no trace of Dean, that Sara started to panic a little bit. In her world, people vanished without leaving any traces all the time and very few were ever seen again. Which wasn't what she wanted to think about.

One door left, and it was just sheer desperation that made her open it.

And Sara jumped, reaching automatically for her revolver, before realising the face starting back at her was her own. A mirror. No, she realised as she stepped in, an entire room of mirrors. Ten mirrors, sides touching in a sort-of circle, the tenth mirror on the back of the door. Sara was careful to keep the door open. There was just enough of witch in her to make her nervy about being trapped between two mirrors. Being trapped between ten mirrors wasn't even an option.

And Dean's EMF was in the middle of the floor.

Sara picked it up, flicked the power button a few times. The batteries must be dead. If Dean had used it here, then it had been on all night, so that figured.

Handling the EMF in a manner which was part respectful and part downright edgy, Sara put it away in her rucksack.

She didn't like mirrors, not at all. One Sara was quite enough, never mind two. These ten mirrors were reflecting reflections, though, creating an entire army of Sara Lucians. And it wasn't just the mind-spinning image these mirrors created that was weirding her out. There was plenty of folklore about mirrors, most of it bad, more than enough to make any Hunter twitchy.

The room reeked of unnatural power as well, making her shiver. Something big had happened here, something big and powerful. Sara had good instincts where that sort of activity was concerned; she'd been around enough rituals and spells to recognise the after-effects.

So someone was playing with mirror magic. Idiot. Any sort of magic had a hefty price. Even exorcisms, which were about as far from magic as you could get whilst still toying with unnatural forces, had the physical fallout, which was painful enough to offset the bad karma of yanking demons from hosts using nothing but willpower and some Latin gibberish. Mirror magic though, that was downright nasty. The mirrors increased the strength of whatever the spell did, but also increased the cost. Normally, those using mirror magic went insane. Other lost their souls.

And if this room hadn't been specifically built for mirror magic, Sara would eat the damn EMF.

As Sara turned to the door, she saw a flicker in the corner of her eye and spun back before she could stop herself. People moving in mirrors, really! Shaking her head at her own paranoia, Sara left the mirror room, letting the door slam shut behind her.

Dean was standing in front of her.

"Sara, you gotta get me out of here," he said.

Instinctively, Sara reached out for him and nearly cried as her hand went right through his arm.

"You gotta get me out of here," Dean repeated and vanished.

Sara stood still for a long moment before she remembered to breathe. Then she swung her backpack back over her shoulder and flat-out sprinted out of the house.

xxx

It wasn't hard to find Mr Parkson. The man's nephew had disappeared from the same house as Dean, which was Mr Parkson's actual home, and it wasn't a secret in the town that the man had moved out to live with his sister.

In accordance with the universal law of nothing-at-all-ever-going-right-_ever_, Mr Parkson was at work on the other side of town. By the time Sara made it to the garage where the man fixed cars, she'd crossed the town about four times and her patience had completely run out.

Mr Parkson turned out to be a nice looking, middle aged mechanic, but Sara had long stopped paying attention to looks. The mechanic thing was odder though. Normally, those who used magic to try and even up the world weren't the same people who were able or indeed willing to fix anything the hard way, piece by careful piece.

"Mr Parkson?" she said finally, firmly telling herself that hitting this guy would not solve anything. Well, not yet, anyway.

"Yes?" he replied, offering her a friendly smile which Sara didn't return.

"I'm from-" Sara paused and then chucked the cover story straight out the window. "My friend Dean went to your house last night. I haven't seen him since."

The smile faded. "I hadn't been in that house for four months. I'm sorry, I can't-"

"What about the mirrors?" she interrupted.

"What?"

"The ten mirrors, in the glorified cupboard upstairs?" She paused, noting the man's furious face. "The front door was open, I was just looking for my friend."

"I think you should leave. Now."

Oh, she so wanted to hit him. "You don't want to help me? Fine. But I'll figure out what the hell you've done."

"I am not a criminal here!"

"But you are awfully defensive. Wonder what that could mean?"

She stalked out of the garage, ignoring the glare Mr Parkson was directing at her back. Back on the street, she pulled out her phone. Her research options were somewhat limited. Most Hunters didn't want to understand magic, just stop those using it for evil, and mirror magic was fairly outdated these days.

Unless…

She dialled a number from memory. Maxwell, the psychic in Canada, had helped to train both Sara and her mother and had an occult knowledge to rival the rest of the Hunters put together.

"Maxwell? Yeah, Sara Lucian here. Know anything about mirror magic?"

xxx

Eric Parkson was not a hugely subtle man. Mechanics didn't really need to spend much time sneaking around. But despite his lack of practice, he managed to make it to the back door without the girl outside spotting him. Whoever she was, she worried him. She had asked about the mirrors, for crying out loud, and Eric wanted nothing more to forget about the stupid things. He'd take a crowbar to the entire room if that wasn't a really bad idea.

But the room wasn't his problem. His problem was the nine – or ten by now, if this Dean character really was missing – missing people and a girl who seemed to be linking them to the mirrors. Which was ridiculous, of course, but…

The girl was only a few feet from the door, talking rapidly into a mobile phone.

"Yeah, ten mirrors, sides touching. Shut the door and you're surrounded kinda deal," she said. "Look, Maxwell, I don't care if only two mirrors are used for mirror magic, this room felt wrong. Like… unnatural."

Well, he agreed with her on that. The room was totally unnatural.

"Whoa, Mum did what? Are you sure?" the girl continued. "Do you know when? '93, you sure? Okay, thanks Maxwell. Bye." She slipped the phone into her pocket.

Eric sagged against the wall as the girl walked away. What the hell was going on here?

xxx

Standard deal, guys. Reviews are loved and the next chapter should be up on Friday.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the reviews for part one!

2xxx

Dean was waiting for her in the motel room.

Sara kicked the door shut, noting dispassionately how she could make out the motel wallpaper through Dean's torso. "Hey, Dean," she said quietly. "Where are you?"

"You have to get me out of here, Sara."

"I know, but you have to tell me something-"

"Just get me out of here!"

"I'm trying!"

"_So try harder!" _

And just like that, he was gone again.

Sara gave herself a few minutes to pull herself back together, but that was all she could spare. The case, think about the case...

So her mother had been to this part of Iowa in 1993 and had also called Maxwell asking about mirror magic. What a coincidence. Well, at least it gave Sara a place to start. 

The Lucians had, as a family, been fighting demons as exorcists for hundreds of years. Somewhere along the line, one of them had started keeping a diary, much like the journals Hunters tended to keep, and the tradition had carried on right to Sara herself. Currently the Lucian Diaries filled several entire bookshelves in her home in Wisconsin, row upon row of battered leather-bound notebooks. Sara had spotted the problem of only having one copy of these texts and had been working on typing them all up, scanning some pages in to keep the copies as accurate as possible.

These copies now lived on compact disks which travelled around with Sara in her duffel bag. Yanking the bag towards her, Sara dug through her clothes until she found the plastic cases. She hadn't typed up all the Diaries, not by a long shot, but she'd started with her own mother's and was working her way backwards. Hopefully she'd made it to '93.

Okay, somebody up there did like her. Right at the bottom of her bag was the right disk. Sara took it out and tracked down her laptop, which was on the bed under a pile of other stuff, and started the computer up. Finally, she could slide the disk in and find out just what on earth was going on here.

Eyes skimming the text on screen, Sara searched for the answers. And didn't find exactly what she was looking for. Didn't find anything at all.

Amelia Lucian hadn't always kept the most thorough of notes – more often than not, you'd write down bits and bobs as you thought of them and try to sort it all out later. But there was _nothing_. Not about this town, not in '93 or in any of the other entries. There wasn't even anything about mirror magic, and if Amelia had needed to ask Maxwell about it, she would've written it down. That's how the diaries worked. Everything written down in the Lucians' own words and records until they didn't need to ask anyone for help.

Furiously, Sara shoved the laptop away. This was beyond ridiculous. She'd never expected her mother to help out when she was alive. Why should it be any different now she was dead?

But she knew the answer to that one. Because it was Dean. Okay, not only Dean. It was like this when any member of her 'family' was threatened. The one and only time Sara had flat-out _begged_ her mother for help was when Adrian Atwood had gone missing. He'd turned up in a bar five miles from where he was supposed to be, trying to drown memories of the loss of a young victim in cheap tequila, but the terror had been real enough.

Sara started pacing, trying to keep her attention focused. Dean was missing, her mother had down _something _here ten years ago, and there was a room reeking of magic. There had to be some connection. Not to mention Dean's non-appearances.

Hang on...

Dean's appearances were... wrong. He was certainly stubborn enough to be able to claw his way out of wherever he was to give her a message, but... Dean hadn't told her anything useful. Not one little thing. And Dean was good at giving information in life-threatening situations, she knew that well enough. He'd know to tell her something relevant. Sara knew there were plenty of things that could make themselves look like another person, but few of them ever managed to act like the person. She should've cottoned onto this earlier and all.

Mirrors and mirror-images. It just got better and better, didn't it?

xxx

The house was pretty bad in daylight, but in the moonlight it looked even more ridiculous. It was the architecture version of ghost in white sheets and chains, and had Dean been with Sara, she would've been treated with a host of bad jokes.

But as it was just her, Sara put all frivolous thoughts out of her head and went to the Impala. With a silent apology to Dean, she picked the lock on the trunk. Taking a few items from her bag and putting them in her pockets, she lobbed the backpack into the trunk and took out a crowbar. A blunt instrument was of great comfort in troubling times, she'd discovered. That was Dean rubbing off on her, of course.

The herbs stuffed in her pocket, however, that was entirely her mother.

The front door was still open, no one caring enough about the property to do so much as shut the door. Sara entered and made her way confidently upstairs. She had a plan, it was a terrible plan, but still she had a plan. That counted for a lot these days.

She re-entered the mirror room and kicked the door shut behind her, ignoring the revulsion at being surrounded by mirrors. Sara knew that doing any magic between two mirrors, let alone ten, was just about the dumbest thing you could do, but just one spell was an acceptable risk. The mirrors would trap all the energy as well, meaning she didn't need to bother with any protective circles. Not that there would be much excess energy. All she was doing was a simple revealing spell. If there was anything solidly supernatural here, this would indicate what.

A tin bowl was pulled from one of her pockets, the herbs tossed in with some sulphur and pig's blood. Sara used a zippo to set fire to the sticky heap and wafted the smoke around the tiny room. This concoction had been one of her mother's discoveries and Sara had used it often enough in the last few years, but not once in the months since Amelia had died.

But Amelia Lucian's influence seemed to stretch beyond the grave as the spell did its work and shadowy images began to appear. Normally, such images floated in thin air, faint and transparent. This time they formed inside the mirrors themselves.

Sara stared in absolute horror, turning slowly to see each mirror in turn. Nine pale faces stared back at her from first nine mirrors, faces she knew well from the missing people reports she'd studied on the way here. And in the tenth mirror...

"Dean," she whispered.

She'd been seeing some spectral version of Dean all day, but this was different. Whilst that Dean had been instinctively wrong in some faint way, this Dean seemed real. It was probably the look on his face; part annoyance, part embarrassment at his current situation. As she watched, the ghostly figures faded away, leaving her own reflection in their place.

Well, this might just be simpler than Sara had thought. Trapping things in mirrors was a time-honoured, ghastly practice and the way to release anything was the same – smashing the mirror.

She stepped forward and hefted the borrowed crowbar. Her upper body strength wasn't nearly as good as a male Hunter's, but she could easily smash a damn mirror. But as she swung the crowbar back, ready to smash, it was grabbed from behind.

Furious, Sara looked over her shoulder to see Eric Parkson gripping her chosen weapon.

"Believe me," he said. "You don't want to do that."

xxx

Downstairs from the mirror room, Eric built up a fire in his old sitting room as Sara hovered by the door, arms crossed and thoroughly pissed-off.

"What's your name?" he asked suddenly.

"Lucian."

"Odd name for a girl."

She rolled her eyes. "I come from an odd family. What's the deal with the mirrors?"

Eric studied her for a moment. "What are you?"

"Human. You?"

"No, I mean, how do you know about... this?"

Sara shrugged. "I hunt things."

"Things?"

She rattled the list off, deliberately flippant. "Ghosts, demons, poltergeists, Black Dogs, Wendigoes-"

"How are you with Doppelgangers?"

"Studied them. Never actually faced one."

"There's one bound in the mirrors upstairs."

"You what?" She couldn't help the incredulous response. You didn't bind a Doppelganger, you just didn't.

"Ten years ago, my family was being slaughtered. Household by household. In each case, all evidence pointed to someone who lived in that house. That person was never found in each case. All the mirrors in the houses were missing."

"So the Doppelganger stole one person and assumed their form to kill the others, then hid the mirrors so the vic couldn't be freed," Sara said. "Classic. How many died?"

"My two brothers, my parents, my mother's two siblings, and all in their houses."

"So how did you bind the Doppelganger?"

"I didn't. I didn't know what to think, you know, but then this woman turned up, going on about mirrors and demons-"

"Oh, I don't believe this," Sara muttered. "Let me guess. English accent, sort of like a school teacher and called Amelia?"

Eric blinked. "You knew her?"

"Thought I did. Do you have any idea what she actually did?"

"She said she split the Doppelganger in ten fragments and bound each fragment into one of the mirrors. The mirrors made the binding stronger, or something, 'cause they reflected the binding back on itself. Uh, she told me to stay out of the room as much as possible and never to break any of the mirrors."

Sara hesitated for a moment, her mind working. "The nine kids who went missing... Your nephew was the first, right?"

Eric nodded.

"When? The exact date?"

"19th of September."

"Late at night?"

"Yeah. Right out of this house. Why?"

Sara swallowed. "That's when Amelia died. She died, and that weakened the spell enough for the Doppelganger to take a new victim." She shook her head. "She must have thought the spell would hold without anyone else maintaining it. Typical Lucian arrogance."

"So can you do something? Can you get my nephew back?"

"I don't know. The way to release a Doppelganger's victim is to break the mirror, but breaking the mirror will also let the monster out. Hey, did you ever see your nephew? I mean, after he disappeared?"

"Yeah, actually. I didn't say anything, 'cause it was crazy. It was him, but not him. Like a ghost or something."

"What did he want?"

"For me to smash the mirrors. He kept saying if I smashed the mirrors, he'd be able to come home. But that's crazy, isn't it?"

"Not to me." Sara reached out and grabbed the crowbar. "That's the traditional way to free a bound spirit. Destroy the container," she explained over her shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Eric called after her as she left the room and hurried back up the stairs.

It was as Sara had suspected; her ever-conscientious mother had numbered the mirrors. That suggested a pattern, a set way of undoing the binding. She grabbed the bowl of blood, herbs and sulphur and threw it at a mirror. Dean's mirror.

He reappeared, ethereal and slightly sheepish.

"Can you hear me?" Sara asked.

Dean nodded, even managing a faint grin.

"Is the Doppelganger with you?"

He shook his head.

Eric made it to the mirror room, sticking his head in the door. "What the-"

"Eric, that's my friend, Dean. Long story. Dean, how do you kill a Doppelganger?"

Mirror-Dean gestured.

"Blunt force? Excessive violence?" Sara guessed. He nodded. "Okay. Anything else I should know?"

Vague shrugging.

Sara slowly turned, looking at each mirror one by one. "Dean's in number ten," she said. "So your nephew must be in one and so on. Breaking any one mirror will release the person inside it. But breaking all ten mirrors will also release the Doppelganger. Brilliant."

"So you can only free nine people?"

Sara shook her head. "No. There's another way, there has to be." But that wasn't strictly true. Whatever Amelia Lucian had done here was so far off what was deemed acceptable use of magic that she hadn't even recorded coming here. She had believed that whatever she had done would hold the Doppelganger permanently, so she wouldn't have seen the need for any safe way to undo the magic.

Sara had never really understood her mother as a person, but she knew how Amelia worked where the supernatural was concerned. Trapping the Doppelganger in not one mirror but ten was inspired. Admittedly, it was also insane, but it had worked.

"I have to break all ten mirrors," she realised. "Or no one gets out."

"But that means the Doppelganger will be released!" Eric protested.

"I can handle the monster," Sara said firmly.

"It'll go after my family again-"

"I said, I can handle it. You need to get out of here."

"This is insanity!"

"I'm not going to leave those people in there."

"You mean you're not going to leave your friend in there."

"Did you complain this much when Amelia came and saved your ungrateful skin?"

"You can't do this!"

Sara whirled around, furious. "If you're willing to trade your nephew's life for your own safety, I should let the damn Doppelganger kill you now!"

"How dare you-"

"Look, mate, I am out of patience! I dare because I've faced things you'd be afraid to even _imagine_. Humans? Not really all that threatening these days."

"Who is he? This guy you're willing to risk everything for?"

"Twice the man you'll ever be. Now, are you going to leave or do I need to get nasty?"

Eric scowled at her. "Fine. Get yourself killed."

"Oh, I intend to," Sara murmured as he thudded down the stairs. "But not today."

She turned back to the mirrors, frowning. The Doppelganger's real power lay in mimicry. Once you knew what you were facing wasn't who it looked like, it was no harder to kill than a ridiculously strong human. Two guns, a crowbar and some burning hatred should do the job pretty well.

But there was a reason why Amelia hadn't simply shot the damn thing when she had the chance to. To kill the Doppelganger, you had to let it manifest completely. Then it wouldn't need mirrors to wreak havoc; it could do it on its own. And there was no re-trapping of a monster like this. Once it was out, it was either killed or would happily kill everyone it came across for the rest of eternity.

Sara knew what her mother would do in her place. Redo the binding, locking the demon in permanently, along with its ten victims. Had Dean not be taken as well, Sara might even have done the same thing. But this was Dean. No way in hell was she leaving him in a mirror with a monster.

The only problem, the only fact that she hadn't told Eric, was that breaking the mirrors didn't guarantee the victim's return. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and no one could really explain it. This might all be for nothing. She's be releasing a monster and she still wouldn't get Dean back.

"Oh, what the hell," she whispered and smashed the first mirror. Then the second and the third and on until the mirror-room was shattered, even the one behind the door.

When the crowbar hit the tenth mirror – Dean's mirror – it shook in Sara's hands. She wasn't just releasing the monster, but also the magic, and all of that was going straight into the length of metal in her hands. Sara dropped the crowbar quickly before something happened.

There were rules for this sort of thing. The Doppelganger would be released from the same location it had been trapped in. There was no way it had been in this room; this was where Amelia had done the binding, so the Doppelganger had a link to this room, but wasn't actually in it. There was only one other mirror in the house, a small one at the other end of the hallway.

Sara kicked the door open, her revolver in her hands. The hallway was empty, but the mirror was completely blackened. The Doppelganger was most certainly free. She made her way cautiously along the hallway, moving softly even in her heavy boots, revolver held steadily in her hands. Adrian had taught her how to stalk silently through a deserted house, but she could never find the inner-cool, the alert relaxedness that he could. She was just alert and by the time the hunt was over, her whole body ached from tension.

_Come on, come on, come on... _

A floorboard creaked behind her. Sara swung around and pulled the trigger. The Doppelganger ducked the first shot, dodged the second and flung itself at Sara. She darted to one side and stuck out a leg to trip the monster, intending to send it sprawling down the stairs.

The plan almost worked. The Doppelganger caught hold of Sara's arm and pulled her down with it. They rolled down the stairs, landing in a heap by the front door, Sara on top of the Doppelganger.

It kicked her off, sending her crashing right through the closed front door. Sara recovered quickly, rolling back up onto her feet despite the pain in her back.

The revolver was gone, most likely having fallen out of her hand at some point between the upstairs hallway and the front lawn. But Sara always had another gun.

She whipped out the Beretta and had it pointing at the Doppelganger as it raised her own revolver against her.

"Well, lookee here," it said, grinning. "Little Lucian's going to shoot her best friend?"

"You're not him," she said firmly. That much she was certain of. "But you are one cocky son of a bitch, aren't you? Snatching a Hunter, drawing attention to yourself like that?"

"None of the civilians here knew what to do. I needed someone like you to help me."

"If you call getting shot 'help', sure."

"If you were going to shoot me, you'd have done it already. No, you helped me. Let me go. So I'll give you back your friend."

"And what, I let you slaughter Eric and his sister?"

The Doppelganger grinned at her, _Dean's _grin and Sara redoubled her grip on her gun. "That was just something to pass the time. I'm over that phase, don't worry. Come on, Huntress, you know it as well as I do. Without me to guide him, Dean'll never make it back to the real world."

"I smashed the mirror, reopened the pathway. He's a smart guy, he'll figure it out."

"Only if he wants to come back," it said. "Many people prefer the mirror-world, you know. Especially if they don't have much to come back to."

"He'll come back."

"You're that sure? Then shoot me!"

So she did. Three shots straight to the chest.

The thing staggered back, its back colliding with the white painted wall of the house, leaving a bloody mark. Then it straightened, blood trickling down its chin. "Didn't Dean mention?" it said clearly. "Bullets don't work on me, little Lucian."

Sara shot it again, on principle more than anything else, and ran. Briefly, she thought of the crowbar, but that was contaminated by magic and in completely the wrong place for her to retrieve it. Trying to batter the Doppelganger to death with her bare hands simply wasn't going to work.

She sprinted away the house to the Impala, the Impala with its glorious psycho-killer trunk. The _locked _trunk, and no time to pick it open. Sara changed direction, heading around the house to the back porch.

The Doppelganger was catching up. Sara could hear its footsteps behind her and, ridiculously, that gave her some hope. Dean could move silently, even at speed. If the Doppelganger couldn't, maybe that meant it couldn't fight like Dean either. Which meant Sara had a chance. The monster was fast, though, even with three bullets in its chest. Well, there were other places to shoot.

Sara stopped abruptly and turned, aiming for the creature's kneecaps. She got off one more shot, left kneecap, but the Doppelganger didn't even stumble. Right, new plan.

There was one other fact on her side. The Doppelganger was armed with her revolver, which normally would mean the end for Sara. But it hadn't shot her. Hadn't even tried to. Which implied it didn't want her dead – it wanted her to suffer, possibly giving her more time to get this situation under control again.

Why couldn't Parkson be a normal guy and have stuff all over his lawn? A nice spade would be so useful right about now, but there wasn't even a big stick. Desperately, Sara dropped and spun, scything the monster's legs out from under it with a kick. It looked like beating it to death with her hands was the only option, so she leapt on top of it and started punching.

It kicked her off again and Sara hit the ground hard, rolling away just before the Doppelganger's knee connected with her stomach. She flipped back onto her feet and circled with her opponent, keeping her arms up to protect her face.

The Doppelganger was a mess, bleeding from the chest, leg and nose, but it grinned savagely at her. Sara glared back, watching it carefully for any hints of impending violence.

"Big mistake, little girl, letting me out of the mirror. Your momma knew better," it said. "Not that it did her much good, right? Heard on the grapevine that she took herself out of the game."

It lunged forward. Sara swerved around it and slammed her foot into the back of its knee, cracking it in the neck at the same time with an elbow. The Doppelganger stumbled and then charged forward again. This time, Sara grabbed it and swung it around, slamming its head into one of the porch's wooden posts. There was a satisfying crunch and Sara gave it another knock for good measure before it pushed itself back, body-slamming Sara into the ground.

"Lucians are all the same," it hissed. "Way to easy to crush."

Sara stabbed it in the ribs. _Thank you, paranoia, for my arsenal. _Twisting the knife in the wound made the Doppelganger howl in pain. Some shoving and another stab got Sara out from under the creature. She hung onto the knife and slammed it down through its neck, her hands covered in red blood. One final blow through its heart and Sara staggered back, wiping her hands on her jeans. She hated blood on her hands, whether it be human or monster or her own.

Or Dean's.

_Stop that,_ she told herself firmly. _That's not Dean. Never was Dean. Never will be Dean. _

That was true enough. Hunters and exorcists had at one point been almost at war, but those days where long past. Dean would never attack her, Sara was sure of it, despite her mother's paranoia about 'getting too close', 'trusting the wrong guy'. This... _thing _was about as far from Dean Winchester as you could get.

The Doppelganger shifted weakly on the grass. Normally if bullets didn't do much, neither would blades, but Sara's knife was iron and had been blessed by Pastor Jim. Iron and sanctity, two useful weapons against any supernatural foe. But the Doppelganger was still alive and Sara wanted it dead. Really dead.

She spared a quick glance around and spotted what she'd overlooked when fighting for her life. Grimly, Sara walked over to the chopping-block and grabbed the axe, yanking it free with some effort.

When she was standing over the Doppelganger again, she made sure it could see the axe in her hands.

"Bring back Dean," she ordered it.

"I cannot," it rasped, blood spilling from its mouth.

"Bring him back!"

When the Doppelganger started to laugh, Sara raised the axe and brought in down, neatly beheading the creature. She left the axe stuck in the ground, stumbled away for a few steps and then threw up, stomach rejecting the little she'd eaten since Dean had vanished. No matter what her head said about the Doppelganger, she felt like she'd just decapitated Dean.

Sara retrieved her revolver and pistol and stuffed them away, although not without care, then made her unsteady way back to the Impala. It took her far longer to re-pick the trunk's lock with her hands shaking, but she managed it eventually and fished out the container of gas Dean kept there. Returning to the dead Doppelganger, Sara tried to avoid looking at it as she soaked it liberally in gasoline and tossed a match onto it. When the flames had covered the body, she added a handful of herbs for cleansing, just in case.

There were very few things that could survive shooting, stabbing, beheading and burning. Any of the above, yes, but not all four. Sara stood there until the flames died away again, leaving only ash. Aside from the blood on her hands and clothes, there was no sign that the creature had ever lived. She'd won.

Yippee for her.

There was no way in hell Sara could walk back to town looking like this. She grabbed the remaining gas and carried it back to the Impala, shutting the trunk again when the container was back in its place. The front door of the house was hanging half-off its hinges, courtesy of Sara slamming into and through it at speed, so she re-entered the house and found the kitchen. Standing at the sink, she scrubbed her hands until the blood was gone. In something close to desperation, she dumped water on her jeans in an attempt to cover up the smears on blood on them. There was more on her shirt as well, so she yanked it over her head and dunked the entire thing in the sink. A quick rinse was all she could cope with, so she wrung out the shirt and pulled it back on, sopping wet.

From the kitchen, Sara could see the charred patch on the lawn, all that remained of the Doppelganger. Slowly, she moved back to the front of the house, wedging the front door shut behind her. She ignored the creaking of the porch steps and sat on the top one, glancing at her watch. Hours 'till dawn.

_"Many people prefer the mirror-world, you know. Especially if they don't have much to come back to." _

_"He'll come back." _

Would Dean come back? Of course he would. He had loads to come back to. You know... all the nice stuff.

Like the most thankless job in the world. Like a father who saw him as a foot-soldier, not a son. Like a brother who just walked out of his life, despite everything Dean had done for him.

Sara rested her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. And waited.

Hours passed. Her shirt and jeans dried on her body, but not before she was chilled to the bone.

She'd done this before, only six months ago. The night Amelia Lucian had died, Sara had just sat in the middle of a forest somewhere, soaked by rain and frozen by wind, unable to move or think. Just waiting, although she had no idea for what.

Now she had a vague idea. She had been waiting for Dean. She hadn't even called him, or told anyone, but her friends had figured it out and he had come.

Just like he would this time.

But as the sun rose, fresh dawn light reflecting off the Impala, Sara felt her heart sink.

When her phone rang, she pulled it out and glanced at the little screen. _JWinchester calling. _Shit. She'd almost managed to forget about John. But she couldn't ignore him, either.

She answered the call, holding the phone close to her ear. "Lucian."

"Sara? Are you still working with Dean? I can't get hold of him and there might be a Black Dog two states over-"

"He's gone."

There was a long pause before John spoke again. He was a Hunter, after all, he knew what that sort of 'gone' meant. "What? Where? What the hell happened?"

"We were looking into some disappearances. It was a Doppelganger. It took Dean."

"Have you broken the mirror?"

"Yeah. But you know that doesn't always-"

"If you broke the mirror, he'll come back."

So John didn't want to hear the truth. Fine, she could live with that. "Yeah."

"Get him to call me when he gets back."

"Sure thing."

Sara slipped the phone away again. At least John could remain stupidly optimistic about his son. She had the despair covered quite nicely.

xxx  
The final (short) chapter will be up by Monday evening. Reviews are loved, guys!


	3. Chapter 3

3xxx

_"I don't understand the blind faith you have in the boy!" Amelia yelled. _

_Sara shrugged, fighting to keep her own voice level. "And I don't understand why you're so determined for me to wind up alone."_

_"You're a Lucian! You'll live alone and die alone. I told you that when you started." _

_"Well, I don't believe it."_

_"It's the way you have to work!"_

_"Why? So I can shuffle off this mortal coil at the ripe old age of thirty?" _

_"Don't even start, Sara. You chose this life."_

_"I chose to help. To make a difference. And Dean will help me do that. He'll keep me alive."_

_"Why should he, when you beat him to death?"_

Sara jerked awake, smacking her head against the railing she was leaning against. Great. She hated that dream at the best of times, and that surprise ending wasn't improving matters. The argument with her mother had been one of the last, and one of the first for a long time. There had been one point when all they did was argue, when Sara was about thirteen and hurting and wanted nothing more than to help her mother. When Amelia had refused to budge on the training – or rather, the lack-of-training – Sara had eventually dropped the matter for a few years. Then she had been trained as an exorcist and a whole new argument started – how much Sara could trust Dean. Since her mother's death, that one stupid argument kept appearing in her dreams. Mind you, if her dreamworld-mother hadn't accused her of killing Dean, the argument would have continued to the part where Sara told her mother to go to hell.

And she wasn't going to think about that.

Glancing at her watch, she saw she'd only been asleep for a few hours. Just long enough for her back to seize up, the cost of being kicked down stairs and through doors before being body-slammed. Nice. Sara was just starting to stretch all the kinks out of her back when she heard a door slam in the house.

Her mother had told her over and over again that the single most dangerous thing in the world was hope. Not stupidity, not arrogance, not insanity. Because hope wormed its way into your heart and then shattered it when the hope turned sour, as Sara discovered when the person staggering out of the mirror-room wasn't Dean.

She recognised him, though. The first guy to go missing, Eric's nephew. What had his name been?

"Ian," Sara said, praying she had the right name.

He jerked round, eyes wide in fear. Good grief, he was way too thin.

"It's okay. It's dead," she said quickly. This guy would know more than anyone what 'it' had been.

"I saw you," he said softly. "Through the mirror. You saw us."

"Yeah, I did." Sara offered a hand, managed a smile. "Ready to get out of here?"

It was a long walk back to town and Ian was stumbling with exhaustion by the time they were out of sight of Eric Parkson's home. Sara kept one eye on him, the other on the path and they walked in silence for most of the distance.

"How did you know what to do?" Ian asked finally as they turned into his road.

Sara had been asked that often enough and always knew exactly what she was going to say. Seven months ago, it was always _Runs in the family. _Six months ago, it had switched to, "Kinda my job."

"Good pay?"

"No pay. And the health plan sucks."

Ian grinned faintly. "And yet you still do it?"

"Looks like." Sara could see Eric through the window, sitting in the front room with a woman she remembered as Ian's mother.

"Is it worth it?"

"Go home, kid. Go home, lie to your mother, and forget. Preferably in that order."

"Hey!" Ian yelled when she was already half way back down the street. "Thanks."

Sara nodded in acknowledgement and kept walking.

xxx

Sara spent the remainder of the day sitting on either the Impala's hood or on the porch, her diary on her knees, writing up what both her mother and herself had done to defeat the Doppelganger. Every hour or so, another scared kid would come stumbling out of the house and Sara would tuck the book away, calm them down and walk them home.

It was only when she was back from walking the fifth kid home that she realised she was trying to figure out the pattern. How long between each reappearance, how long she might have to wait for Dean to come back. She'd just worked it out as somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half when the next person came out of the house. Sara had the list of missing people next to her and a quick glance confirmed her suspicions.

Number five, Isaac Smith. Check. Safe at home, bluffing his way through the questions about where he'd been for three months.

Number seven, Zoe Webber. Check. Currently blinking in the sunlight, confused as hell.

_Where the hell was number six? _

She'd walked Zoe home and made it back to the Impala without freaking out, but as she pulled out the case file that Dean had assembled, complete with backgrounds on all the missing kids, Sara's mind kept repeating the one phrase she didn't want to hear right now.

_"Many people prefer the mirror-world, you know. Especially if they don't have much to come back to." _

Number six, Aidan Jackson, certainly didn't seem to have much to come back to. No family, bad stint in foster homes across America, just been fired, dumped and evicted all in the space of about a fortnight. He'd been included in the case file just because no one knew for sure that he was missing. Until Sara had seen him in the mirror the previous night, she'd suspected he'd just packed up and buggered off.

He might still come back. But up until now, the kids had been popping back in the exact same order that they disappeared in, so Sara doubted it. No Hunter – or Lucian, for that matter – had ever worked out why some returned from the mirror-world and some didn't. Hating your life seemed as good a reason as any.

Aidan's lack of desire to return home seemed to have buggered up the time system as well. The seventh kid didn't show up for three hours, but the eighth and ninth both arrived within ten minutes. Sara sent that pair off together, assuming that if one of them collapsed, the other could deal with it. She stayed on the Impala's hood, notebook abandoned in the fading light, eyes fixed on the front door.

This was it. Endgame. No monster to hunt, no notes to make, no victims to help. Nothing to do but hurry up and wait.

Shit, this was worse than stalking a monster through a house. Worse than an exorcism. Worse than telling her mother to go to hell two weeks before she died. Because there wasn't a damn thing she could do right now. There was a reason she'd started hunting, hunting, not exorcising, because exorcising was all waiting for the demon to rear its ugly head, but hunting was _hunting, _taking the fight to the monster, not hiding like a scared kid in a closet, shit, there had to be something else she could do-

Dean walked out of the house, cocky smile replaced by concern and he looked around, quickly spotting Sara sitting on the Impala with her knees drawn up to her chest. She had just managed to stand up again when he was in front of her. The nice thing about being a foot shorter than your best friend, Sara discovered, was that your head fitted just under his chin when he hugged you. She fisted her hands in his shirt and tried to ignore the fact that she was shaking.

"Don't you _ever _try to fight something like that alone again," Dean growled in her ear.

Sara nodded mutely and tried to stop trembling, with minimal success.

"Sara? Say something."

She took a deep breath. "I hate mirrors," she mumbled finally.

Dean chuckled softly. "Yeah. You ready to get out of here?"

"God, yes."

"Call me Dean."

An old joke, not particularly funny the first time she'd heard it, but Sara managed a faint smile as she gently disentangled herself. Dean kept one hand on her shoulder and gave her a slight push towards the passenger door, using his other hand to snatch up her diary and offer it.

Sara fell asleep with her book in her hands, the beat of _Whisky on the Rocks _thudding in her head in an oddly comforting way. Not the greatest idea she'd ever had, because it was only a twenty-minute drive to the motel and when Dean woke her up again, she was stuck in the blink-and-you're-unconscious sort of mindset.

"Jesus, Sara, didn't you sleep at all?" Dean said, but he sounded more amused than pissed as he pulled her out of the Impala and shoved her towards the motel room door.

Sara had a really good retort to that. She _did_, it was just lost in the massive yawn that threatened to split her face in half as she opened the door, so she settled for a shrug. It was probably safer, actually. Continuing along this topic would undoubtedly lead to the fact that she'd fought the Doppelganger after running all over town and done a spell, all without any rest.

"How'd you figure it out?" Dean asked, pulling off his jacket and going into the bathroom. "The Doppelganger, I mean."

Thank god for thin walls. They could talk fine, even in different rooms.

"Mum was here ten years ago. She bound the Doppelganger in those mirrors."

"You can bind a Doppelganger?"

"Apparently. She... When she, you know, the spell weakened. The Doppelganger started snatching people in the hope someone would break the mirrors and let it out."

She rubbed the back of her neck, feeling on edge again. It didn't take her long to figure out why. There was a mirror over the dresser. Sara pulled the blanket off her bed and covered it up. So what if it was stupid and irrational? She was entitled to her moments of weakness.

When Dean came back out of the bedroom, he took one look at the covered mirror and then switched his gaze to his friend. Sara, undoing her boots and kicking them under the bed, shrugged. They both grinned at the other, then turned away to change.

"Hey Sara?" Dean said over his shoulder. "The Doppelganger, it didn't do anything, did it? To you, I mean."

"Nah. Just kidnapped my friend and stole his face and kicked me down some stairs and through a door and, oh yeah, tried to kill me-"

"So we're okay?"

Sara looked round, honestly confused. "I knew it wasn't you." _At least until I killed you. _

"Well, I am a particularly unique individual."

Joke, deny, repress, move on. Sara couldn't fault the system. The Lucians were just as bad about 'dealing' as the Winchesters. Sara was no different.

"Particularly fat-headed. I suppose that could be called 'unique'," she replied.

Dean stuck his tongue out at her and shifted over in his bed, so he was on the side closest to the door. "Oh, come on, Sara," he said when she didn't move. "Don't get all British on me."

And, yeah, they'd slept in the same bed before, those first few nights after Amelia had died and Sara had been hurting way too much to maintain the rules she inflicted on her relationships with anyone, but that had stopped months ago. But it didn't look like Dean was going to budge on this and Sara suddenly realised that it was _February _and her only blanket was over the annoying mirror, so she obediently curled up next to him. Provided they never made a big deal out of it – and Dean never would, she knew – she could cope with this.

"How long was I gone?" Dean asked, turning out the lights.

"Two days." She shifted, getting comfortable. "Not long at all. And you need to call your dad."

"In the morning," Dean said, and waited. He couldn't see Sara's face, but he could hear her breathing and long experience told him when she was just about still awake, but not at all in control of what she was saying. Yeah, so he was a sneaky bastard, but he knew Sara wasn't telling him something. "Sara? Did my evil twin say something to you?"

"'S nothing," she murmured sleepily.

He knew what he had to say next. "It's okay. I won't be mad with you." God, he'd wanted to resurrect Sara's grandmother and slap her back to hell when he'd realised that that was what Sara was afraid of. People being mad with her because she wasn't living up to some ridiculous notion of an emotionless, perfect Lucian.

"Said you wouldn't come back. Wouldn't want to come back."

"I don't leave people behind, Sara." He carefully slipped one arm under her, grinning slightly when Sara automatically rested her head on it. For a girl who kept people at arm's length, she didn't mind some contact now and again.

Sara muttered... something that made absolutely no sense and Dean knew he wasn't getting any more information from her this time. But that was okay. It was all pretty much okay, two days spent in a mirror and his thankfulness that Sara covered up the mirror in here aside. Sara hadn't given up, had figured out what to do and then done it, her own safety be damned, and then waited for him to show up.

Dean didn't remember much about his time in the mirror-world, just the dumb feeling he always got when a demon got one up on him and the nasty sensation of not being able to stretch your legs. It wasn't that bad a place, sure, no fire or brimstone, just peace and quiet and, well, boredom. And then Sara had done her little hoodoo thing, seen him in the mirror and he'd been able to see her again and that was kinda it. He was getting out of there, because he recognised that look in her eyes. The same one he'd had in his eyes for months after Sam had left. It wasn't grief, not what Sara had felt for her mother, but the mind numbing knowledge that the person you cared about would rather be anywhere else than even in the same state as you. Sara always did assume the worst.

And if he tried really, really hard, Dean could just about not think about what he would've done if Sara hadn't been standing right in front of him.

xxx

"You know, there's meant to be a Black Dog in Arkansas," Dean said, tossing the last bag into the back seat of the Impala.

Sara shrugged and almost didn't wince. Two days wasn't quite enough to stop bruised ribs aching like the devil. "Your point?"

"Well, you wanna come or not?"

She gave him a look which Dean did his best not to understand. They never did two jobs in a row together. They never had, mainly because of Amelia Lucian and her disapproval of Sara wanting to be both a Hunter and an exorcist. There had also been John and Sam to consider. John could spare Dean on hunts more often that not, but leaving John and Sam alone together for more than about a week always ended badly. Correction,_ had _always ended badly. But now Dean and Sara were both alone. It was just that Sara was the only one with a decent reason as to why.

"Sure," she said finally. "Your dad give us anything decent to go on?"

"Cryptic as always. One of these days, he's gonna start sending co-ordinates and leave it at that."

"Well, you encourage him."

"I do _what_?" Dean said before catching the mischievous look on Sara's face. "Oh, this is gonna end _so _badly."

"It's not starting so well either," Sara replied.

But as he drove the Impala away from the Mirror Town, as he was always going to call it now, with Sara riding shotgun, Dean didn't think it was such a bad beginning.

xxx

And thus concludes _False Reflections. _I hope you enjoyed it. Reviews are loved, as always. The next story with Dean and Sara will turn up again in a few weeks, when a witch performing human sacrifices attempts to destory them with a deadly curse.


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